Ep410: Michael Maher – Take the Time to Think When Things Get Tough

Andrew Stotz 00:00
Be a low fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever, stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk. But to win big, you've got to reduce it. To join our community go to my worst investment ever.com and receive these five free benefits. First, you get the risk reduction checklist I've created from the lessons I've learned from all my guests. Second, you get my weekly email to help you increase your investment return. Third, you get a 25% discount on all Ace Don's Academy courses. Fourth, you get access to our Facebook community to get to know guests and fellow listeners. And finally, you get my curated list of the Top 10 podcast episodes. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from at Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests. Michael Marr, Michael, are you ready to rock? I'm ready. I'm ready to go. Yeah, in fact, you just told me that you just finished your workout. So you must be pumped up. That's right. I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I'm racing out. Yeah. All right. Well, let me region Roy. Absolutely. Well, let's do this. I'm going to tell the audience a little bit about you. Mike Omar is a musician turned business owner. Yes, he wants to dream of being a rock star, and even dropped out of college to pursue that dream. But then reality set in. Now Michael runs his own Amazon managed services agency called cartilage. And he loves it. He spends his time helping his clients translate their brand story into highly engaging product listings, and artfully utilize Amazon's advertising platform to insert their brand into the conversations consumers are having with them. Michael, take a minute in filling for their tidbits about your life.

Michael Maher 01:58
Yeah, I get to work with a totally remote team spread out across the world from the Philippines, US Europe. We started that way four years ago. And we really get to majority of the products that you buy an Amazon or not from Amazon. And so we get to work with brands that and really take the core of their brand and turn it into something that will generate sales for them creating a sustainable channel, and ultimately getting them profitable. There's a lot of talk about, you know, seven figure eight figure businesses. And for me, it's really about, you know, long term playing the long game, and what can you take home at the end of the day, that to me is where the success really is for brands?

Andrew Stotz 02:43
You know, I'm so interested in Amazon. So I got a couple questions for you. You know, there's two types of people that I want you to think about, you know, one type of person is me, I got a few books, I've four books or so five books on Amazon. And, you know, I just self published, some of them are doing better than others. You know, I did one that's a free book, you know, to try to kind of see what's, what the downloads are like, I've never, I felt like, advertising is just daunting. I don't understand anything about advertising on Amazon, so I never really did it. And then I would like for you to think about that man or woman who's listening doesn't have anything on Amazon. And, you know, let's try to think, should they? What is the power of Amazon? So I'm just curious, from your experience, how would you help myself and the listeners, think about Amazon from those two different perspectives.

Michael Maher 03:37
I love how you set that up. And I think a lot of brands have this mentality of, you know, there's $346 billion of revenue that Amazon generates. And it's like, how do we tap into that, and it's exciting. But it is also very daunting, because it's so big. And countless people that we consult with, say, Hey, I went in, I opened an account. And I tried to do this. And then I just stopped because I had no idea what I was doing. And that doesn't surprise me at all. Because over the past decade or so from when I started selling, I started as a seller and turn into a human agency owner. The platform's changed a ton. And I think the thing that's most important for someone, whether it's an author, and we've worked with several authors, if it's someone who's thinking about starting a business on Amazon, it's all about framing expectations. Some people are gonna say its content, it's advertising, it's all the stuff. Yes, those are components of it. But it's the thought process of how you go into it. That's going to determine whether you can make this work or not. And so when I speak about expectations, there are plenty of opportunities on Amazon. But it's how I think it's ultimately how patient can you be if you're able to start something small, grow it over time, potentially with help or even figuring it out on your I'm, while you're working another job, that's something that in a couple years, that could really be something, but you have to be patient. And I think a lot of people want to get the big sales and get money in your bank account. And the truth of the matter is to get really big sales. Initially, it requires a lot of capital, but you don't have to go into Amazon that way. So if you're thinking about how can I get into Amazon, it just starts with an idea, it starts with the product idea, that turns into some more research, plenty of tools out there to analyze the Amazon landscape. And then that idea that you've researched, then turns into, you know, the process of do I really want to do this and something that we I just consulted with a brand earlier today, one of our clients, were just talking big picture. And I said, you know, one of the keys to Amazon is being able to sell something repeatedly. So it's not autopilot, but you want if someone likes something, you want to continue to give that product to people. And there are a lot of I would say fashion brands that really rely on seasonal stuff. And there's a shift of thinking that has to happen. So really, it's To me, it's just about expectations. What are your expectations going in, you can be satisfied and successful if you frame it, right,

Andrew Stotz 06:17
my and what just for the listeners out there, what is your kind of ideal client so that if anybody's listening, and then they need help, or they want help, what would you describe as your ideal client?

Michael Maher 06:30
Sure, we'll all throw out there that regardless of who you are, feel free to connect with me, I'm happy to put you in the right send you off in the right direction, or put you in touch with someone if you're not my ideal client. And I know who that is. So I'm happy to give away information to people because I've had many people that have built into me. So that's number one. And in terms of ideal clients, there are three sellers, three types of sellers on Amazon, there are the resellers. And that's how I started, some people will do what they call retail arbitrage or they'll buy something at a discount. So selling on Amazon, then we have the private label people. And those are people who aren't really creating new product, they're just taking an existing product, slapping their brand on it, and then selling it because they notice, oh, there's a need for this in the market. And then there are brands, legitimate brands, who they have a brand story, they have a very defined product, that product has a very distinct views, that's who we're working with are those brands. And then from there, you know, if we're going to quantify things a little bit, we're looking for brands that, you know, have it have an established brand, they could be a newer brand, but as long as they have a brand story that's legitimate, then we will, we will work with them. And typically, we're looking for brands that overall, you know, they could have their own ecommerce store, they could be in brick and mortar, they can even be selling on Amazon and just not getting the results they want. But overall, they're typically doing anywhere from, you know, one to maybe 20 or 30 million total revenue.

Andrew Stotz 07:59
And one question, my last question related to Amazon is just the, to what extent is Amazon give you the space to tell your brand story for that type of client?

Michael Maher 08:11
There's Amazon's very, I would say strict about, you know, you can't change how the page looks. But they give you opportunities on your product listing and other opportunities as well, to tell the brand story. So I think it's about really utilizing that space. Well, if you've got if you get you know, seven images, plus a video, and you're not taking advantage of all that you're losing sales, if you're not, if you're not able to, you know, take that video and then go and advertise with it. You're losing sales. So I'd say plenty of opportunities. Are you really doing a good job of telling that in that space?

Andrew Stotz 08:51
Right. Got it,

Michael Maher 08:52
you're having an elevator pitch, you got to know what your what your quick pitch is to get in the door, huh?

Andrew Stotz 09:00
Well, it's great to learn from an expert, I appreciate that. And for the listeners out there, you know, feel free to reach out to Michael, I know, he's mentioned that already. And he and I talked earlier about LinkedIn being a great way to reach out as well as you can come to the show notes and click on the show notes. And then you can go to content, Michael. Well, speaking of brandstory Now it's time to share your worst investment ever. That's kind of my brain story. And since no one ever goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to then tell us your story.

Michael Maher 09:36
Yeah, I like your brand story. Part of the reason I like it is because it's a challenge. And I love a good challenge. So I love I appreciate the opportunity to just come on the show and be honest and talk about something that could feel like a failure, but I think was ultimately a great learning experience for me. So I started selling back in 2010. I was working a job that I hated was able to build an e commerce business for you. here while I was working this other job, and I finally quit another job into entrepreneurship full time, was able to launch on multiple channels, eBay, Amazon, Sears has marketplace, believe it or not, not very successful. Apparently, it's still running. And I had a couple brands that I created as well. And I was not a trained business person. I didn't go to business school, my degree in college was actually Asian Studies. So very, I just did Japanese for a long time. And I thought, How can I get out of college, I want to get out as quickly as possible, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I built this business up really not knowing I knew what a p&l was no idea what a balance sheet was. When I first started, I thought I had a friend who was an accountant who helped me get started, he had started his own e commerce business. And he was explaining double entry accounting and like we will wait, the money's here, why don't you take it out and put over here? That doesn't make any sense. No, I want the money here. And eventually, I learned I asked for help and got help from people. But this specific situation I'm thinking of, I just remember having this desire to grow my business and almost being desperate to, to do so to, to whatever means possible, I had this idea of what I think success looked like. And the success of my business was very closely tied to my self worth. So my business wasn't succeeding, I wasn't succeeding. And during this time period, and I was a couple years into my several years into my business. And I just didn't have the cash than needed on hand, it was tied up on credit cards, it was tied up in inventory, it was tied up in paying myself and paying other people. And so at the time, there was an immense pressure upon me to that I really placed upon myself to get my business to perform. And I didn't really I didn't have other entrepreneurs that I was really connecting with, I didn't really share time with my wife, because I find needed to carry this on my own wasn't something that I needed to bother her with. And in this moment, I was like, I need to get extra money. So how am I going to do that? So I just start researching places to get money. And of course, the easiest places to get money are cash advance places, merchant merchant cash advances, plenty of companies out there some I've worked with, and I'm still getting calls to this day about text and text messages even about do you need this line of credit. And I started getting a little interesting with some of those, you know, coming up with crazy stories, like, Yes, I need capital, I'm running an e commerce taxidermy store. And I really need we're getting a big demand for Moses, and we just don't have the money. That was an actual story that I came up with. But I just I started searching around for different, you know, merchant cash advances places, cash advance places, and went ahead and locked in on one. I mean, it was a terrible deal. monthly payments paying back, it was not a large sum of money, maybe $14,000. I mean, you're large, from a business standpoint, it can work personally. But I remember having to pay monthly payments, tons of interest, I mean, just basically paying interest all upfront. And the amount of money that was given to you was even cut short, because there is a fee. So even if you were getting 14 grand, it was more like, you know, 12, eight, or something like that. So I mean, just just awful. And I remember getting all the paperwork, in order really being excited about this new opportunity. And I was a little apprehensive, but I felt like I did my research in terms of finding the right person. What I didn't do the research on was the actual deal itself. And I didn't consult with anyone, maybe even instinctually because I thought people are gonna tell me No, and I want to do this, and I want to be ethical. So that led up to me signing the document, and getting the cash advance. And it was the day after that I realized, Oh, my gosh, I made a huge mistake.

Andrew Stotz 14:09
And what was it that made you think you made a huge mistake?

Michael Maher 14:13
I looked at the terms. And it was, you know, I think like $800 a week that I'm supposed to pay back. But it was for like a decade. And it was a I mean, it was just awful. If you're out there just don't do it. It's not worth it. It's not you know, write it out is the best thing I could say. Don't Don't go through with it. And that was just looking at that I realized, oh my gosh, I mean this big mistake.

Andrew Stotz 14:41
I need to tell you, did you tell your wife? I eventually told my wife, right, but on that day,

Michael Maher 14:49
um, I don't I don't know. I think maybe I told her later that day, once I finally realized that it wasn't that I wanted to withhold from her and of course, as a being For almost 13 years, and being an entrepreneur for 11, I've learned to communicate better and that I need to be open and share stuff. And so now you know, finances for my business, I'm something I talk about with my wife, often, she's very clued in to that. And I just felt like I had to carry the weight myself, I'm like, I gotta be strong, I got to, you know, be an entrepreneur, I got to get out there and do it and make this happen.

Andrew Stotz 15:23
And before we talk about the lessons that you learn, just give us some idea of how you dealt with that, you know, over the, you know, the next years, or whatever it took to get through that.

Michael Maher 15:36
Yeah, so I ended up. I knew I had made a mistake. And I ended up calling my mom and I said, I made a big mistake, I need out. And I remember exactly where was where we went coffee. And she was, and my parents are incredibly loving and supportive. They've always told me to go out and do what I wanted to do. You know, and of course, go the direction that you feel called and my dad made some interesting decisions. He was in his mid 30s, and biochemist and said, Hey, I'm feeling like God's calling me to go be a physician. And he had a seven, a five and a three year old. My mom's like, are you sure he's like, yes, this is it. Definitely the right direction for him. But they were also very encouraging. And so I ended up, you know, going to them, and they helped me to get out of this. But I think the biggest, it still was a mess. And the biggest lesson that I really learned out of this is that sometimes you can't get out of your own crap, you're just stuck in it. And sometimes you have to sit in that. And instead of going to getting capital, if I had looked at what I was, what I was doing, and where the problem was, I probably could have diagnosed it a lot easier, and made some adjustments made some changes, I could have said, Hey, I'm not going to pay myself for a couple months, and I'm going to, I can get that money to go back into the business too. There's so many different things I could have done. And I've done that before. You know, I had to make sacrifices before but it really was just, instead of trying to find a solution, and acting so quickly, if I would have really thought about it and just taken my time. I think when you know you're supposed to act, get out there and act. But when you don't know and you aren't sure if you need to wait and you need to sometimes just listen to what is the direction that you need to go, what is the way that I need to go? And so that was probably the biggest thing that I got out of that. And also just money doesn't solve problems. That was another big lesson too.

Andrew Stotz 17:47
Yeah, well, let me summarize a few things that I took away. You kind of reminded me of this situation. I was back in the US visiting my sister and she was in a pretty bad relationship. And she and I took a trip to go see my mom and dad down in North Carolina. So we drove and I'm a civil war buff. So we went from, from Maine to or let's say maybe it was maybe it was New York or Boston to North Carolina, and we went and we went to Gettysburg, Gettysburg and then we went down, you know, through the Shenandoah Valley, to restrict we, you know, go through the Stonewall Jackson's crew, you know, campaigns in the valley and all that. But she was in such a bad situation. And, and we had a saying that we kind of came up with and that is when you're in this shit. Don't splash around a lot.

Michael Maher 18:37
Yes, that's it. When you're in the shit don't flash around a lot. That is exactly it. Sometimes you just have to sit and wait. And I mean, the I guess the way that I look at it is I always felt I had to take action to do something. And honestly, in the period of my business, basically, the e commerce side going downhill that led to me creating my agency. And it was in there that I had to sit in the shit and not splash around a bunch and just say, Alright, like God, I tried to try to do things. What is it that I'm supposed to do? I'm not seeing not seeing the direction. And it was in there that I ultimately discovered how to get through it. But I mean, it really took stinking for.

Andrew Stotz 19:19
Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, part of that other lesson from that is that, you know, sometimes things happen quickly. And sometimes they happen slowly. And particularly in business, small business, sometimes it's a trap, you know, it's hard to move forward. And you can't really move back. I think when we were in a really tough time with my coffee business here in Thailand, where we have a factory. It was really we were in the middle of a 1997 economic crisis. And we didn't see a way out of getting revenue coming for the next year or so. I mean, we didn't have the budget to hire salespeople. And even if we did, we weren't convinced that we would get much and we couldn't go back. In other words, nobody's buying this factory, and there's certainly anybody that would buy it would buy it for 10 cents on the dollar. And you know, we'd get nothing. So sometimes, you know, you're just kind of stuck in the shit and you just got to plod along through it. The other thing I wrote down is, you know, it's lonely at the top. And, you know, it's something that we always say, you know about big CEOs and all that. But the truth is, when you're an entrepreneur, it can be very lonely, you know, and you don't want to share, you know, it, how comfortable would anybody be if the owner of a business comes in and shares the feeling that they had to am last night when they said, it's all going to collapse in and I won't be able to pay anybody salaries. You know, if you walk in with that fear that you probably wake up at 2am, you know, every now and then, and you share that with your team, you know, that just doesn't help. And so you're naturally forced. And then, you know, you bring in the element of the wife and family and all that. And then it just brings in a lot. And so that takes me to the third thing that I wrote down. And that is, you know, when you face challenge, you need to explore all the options. And the best way to do that is to find someone that you trust, and sit down and talk about slowdown. And you know, someone that doesn't mind that you stink a little bit right now. Yeah. And then just kind of go through. Yeah, anything you would add to that? No,

Michael Maher 21:24
I think that the community piece is something that I learned as an entrepreneur, I once I found community, I felt so much more enriched, and my problems didn't go away. But I had other people that I can talk to about them and other people that I could use as resources. I learned to ask for help more, I need help. And as my business is growing and succeeding, now, I have a growing profitable business, which I'm very, very thankful for. not without its challenges, going through some some interesting stuff right now, some change up with team members, and what that looks like and services we're providing to people how we're delivering that. And I've been able to talk with people about it, I've reached out and said, Hey, I need your help with this. I've hired coaches to help me too. I hire a coach last year to help me build out a sales channel, build out a pipeline, determine what that's going to look like and be a better salesperson, because I didn't really have a ton of experience doing that. And it's changed my world. And so I think, you know, having someone that you trust and can consult with is huge finding community and just ask for help people want people want to help. And it's the someone's what's the worst, they could say, No, I hate you. I don't ever want to see you again. Okay, well, they, how good of a friend were they if they

Andrew Stotz 22:38
just need to know that? Yeah, no, I think very helpful. Yeah. Thank you very much. I will be on my way now. Or as a friend of mine used to say, thank you very much. Yeah, that's, that's exactly. That's exactly it. Yeah. So based upon what you learn from this story, and I want you to think about that young man or woman out there that is kind of feeling, you know, stuck in the middle, and you know, wants to go forward. What and think about what you've learned over these years, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Michael Maher 23:13
I think the first thing, there's a couple things that are very related, but the first thing would be your work is it can be very stressful, especially as an entrepreneur, if you've got your own business, take a step away from that. It's, it's the shit that's there is going to be there. Okay, so take a step away, take a breather, pause, maybe take a day and and go and sit in a park and journal or walk around, think talk out loud, pray, whatever it is that you that you want to do, and just try to gather yourself and don't act out of the fear that that's very palpable, but it's there. Don't Don't act out of that initially. And then I would say, go and find someone who you trust very similar to what you said, Andrew, go and find someone you trust, and be honest with them and say, you know, what should I do ask for their help? And listen, don't just ask for help. There's nothing worse than when my daughter's like, what should I do? Should I do this? Or that? And I say, Yeah, do this. And she goes, and does that. Listen to what they say, if you trust them. And and and then take the time to think about it. You know, any financial problem that I've had? It's any issue that I've had, it never had to be solved right away. There was always time to figure it out. But I didn't notice that in the moment because I was so panicked on trying to fix it.

Andrew Stotz 24:44
So I'm just writing down take the time. Yeah, absolutely. Take the time to figure it out. So last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Michael Maher 24:55
My number one goal is to for growth in my agency, but I would say Saying more than just growth, the goal for us is to serve people at a really high level to really help those brands sticks to excel. And so I want to be able to help more people. And I wanted to be able to grow the business that way, take on more team members as needed, pay my team more for certain things add, you know, different incentives. So the goal really is to double our clients, we've got about 10. Right now, we're very intentional about who we take on. So we're looking to double that. If we do that properly, we can hit a really high sales goal that we have. And in that, I also want to be able to in the podcasts that I release in the blog that I have in the content I put out on LinkedIn, I really want to be able to be seen as a trusted source of information. And not just because it's a lead magnet, yes, my podcast could help bring people in, yes, the blog can help bring people in. But I want people to see that our real honest growth tagline is true. We want to help people create real honest growth, we're not about if it's quick, cool, but it's not always going to be that way. And so I really want to be seen as a trusted source as we grow the business so that people say, Hey, I, I believe what this guy is saying. And he's actually helped me.

Andrew Stotz 26:17
Tell the audience about your blog and your podcast is so that they know what they can expect and go there.

Michael Maher 26:24
Yep. So our blog for my business is that think cardiology calm when you have a problem with Amazon, think cardiology cardiology.com is taken. So what do you do, and it's just blogs right there, top of the page, more stuff to come. There's one post right now, more to come. And then I'm launching a podcast of the next couple months called the longer game. And you'll be able to find a landing page at the longer game.com. And the whole goal of that is talking about the future of retail what is retail going to look like over the next 510 1520 years? How is Amazon changed the game with that what is brick and mortar going to look like? Gonna bring out a lot of different people. It's not going to be super only Amazon focus. And I like e commerce. I want to talk about retail I want to talk about malls closing want to talk about everything and what is it going to look like in the future so people can brands and consumers can say, hey, that I like that or I think Yeah, that would be cool. Or maybe imagine what its gonna look like.

Andrew Stotz 27:22
Fantastic. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. My number one goal for the next 12 months is to help you my listeners to reduce risk and increase return in your life. To achieve this, I've created our community at my worst investment ever.com and I look forward to seeing you there. As we conclude my goal. I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience? Take the time people say beautiful and that's a wrap on another great story to help us create grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.